FreieFarbe – FreeColour

An Initiative to Liberate Colour

Who we are

We are a non-commercial association of professional colour users. We want to provide hints and advice regarding consistent colour use across all areas of application, as well as demonstrate how the world of colour could be a little easier to handle. And we want to show that a computer is an ideal tool for working with colour, not the least because it can liberate colour!

Join us! On our website you'll find a blog, which allows you to add your own articles. You can also contribute comments that show interesting colour-related examples from your field of expertise, and useful hints.

And there's much more to come soon!

Most parts of this website are still in German, as FreieFarbe is still working on a complete translation of the German original (freiefarbe.de).

Creating an online resource pool with the necessary knowledge for consistent colour workflows;

Making the "mystery" that is colour comprehensible;

In other words: It wants to liberate colour from its proprietary chains! This website attempts to focus on the various good approaches to achieve this goal.

We want to encourage an open and constructive exchange on the options and opportunities which is open for everyone.

Did you know...

...that hundreds of colour collections from commercial colour vendors are competing for the customers' attention? Major vendors of colour systems are protecting their products from copying and comparisons. They are claiming intellectual property rights to "their" colours. That's the world of colour in 2015. It could be better (= more practical for us users and much freer)!

"...any cross-referencing, in whole or in part, to any PANTONE Color system, including, but not limited to, the PANTONE numbers and PANTONE Colors, by third parties, may be a violation of PANTONE, Inc.'s proprietary rights and is strictly prohibited..."

Quote from a Pantone colour fan.

"... the use of (...) the complete or partial, similar or identical production of RAL products is only allowed with the express authorisation of RAL gGmbH. This applies to all products and types of use, in both physical and digital form..."

Quote from the RAL-K7 colour fan

"Being an NCS Licence Partner means that you benefit from the rights of making references to NCS and to refer to the NCS logo and trademarks in your market communication."

Quote from the NCS website

In Germany alone, 95 trademarks for colours are currently registered. Examples: Beiersdorf-Blue (Pantone 280), Milka-Violet, Telekom-Magenta (RAL 4010). These colours can not be used by any competitor for competing products. See the (German) article in Wikipedia

We believe: External property of colour is an external claim to our emotions. As only selected colour collections can be protected by copyright, mathematical systems like e.g. RGB, CIEHLC, CIEL*a*b*, HSB offer a license free, comprehensive, infinitely variable and vendor-independent colour communication.

The Future: CIE L*a*b* and HLC

One step to liberate colours is the universal adaption of the CIE L*a*b* colour model, and this includes end users. Since CIE L*a*b* isn't very intuitive, FreieFarbe / FreeColour also promotes the use of the HLC (Hue, Lightness, Chroma) colour definition, which is easier to handle than pure L*a*b*. From a user point of view, it's similar to HSV in the RGB colour model, but much more reliable and flexible.

Each CIEL*a*b* colour can be expressed in L*a*b* or in HLC values. HLC is easily comprehensible as Hue, Lightness, and Chroma (Saturation).

Free Colour – more important than ever

Professional colour users are in constant need of colour system comparisons. What is the right adhesive foil for a company's colour? How can I transfer the colour to the internet, to the storefront or a professional printer? And the list goes on. Time and again the problem of colour system comparisons arises, as well as questions of colour harmonies (what colour harmonises with my orgininal colour, how can I gradate it reasonably?). Most well-known vendors of colour systems answer those questions almost exclusively within their collections. (No surprise here, because we are not supposed to use other colours.)

Imagine how easy to handle the world of colour could be if everyone would use a universally calculable colour model!

To achieve this, people need to rethink and change their behaviour. It's necessary to abandon closed colour collections. The computer can do the necessary work and is the tool of choice today. It makes colours infinitely calculable and comparable. Moreover, calculated colours cannot be protected by copyrights, patents or trademarks.

Which mathematical model makes the most sense? CMYK is widespread, but its gamut is too limited to serve as reasonable and common model. RGB is being used in all computers and can therefore be used immediately, but its gamut is limited as well. Moreover, it's a technical description of the colour model used by the display device and hence doesn't take into consideration the perception of the human eye. CIELAB is common in colorimetry; it's perception-oriented, device-independent and has no gamut limitation, which makes it the better model. Unfortunately, CIELAB is, at least until now, not well-known.

In addition, precise, systematic and complete colour samples for both RGB and CIELAB aren't available. The same goes for real-world conversions to print, varnish, house paint, plastic or textile colours. RGB and CIELAB may exist in computers, but in real life, they're largely absent.

If this could be changed, the use of colour wouldn't just be made easier and cheaper, it would also bridge a giant gap in the market worldwide.

Shows colour systems in the three-dimensional CIELAB colour system. About 30 colour systems are being displayed. It's possible to recognise the possibilities and the gaps, which is also helpful in teaching and training. It includes the calculation of colour harmonies. (German)

Here you have free access to c. 300 colour systems as colour palettes for many programmes (e.g. Brillux for Adobe CC, Caparol for CorelDraw etc.). There are about 10,000 colour palettes available. Current free access: FreieFarbe, 000000

ICC Profiles

Here we have assembled links to some of the most important ICC profiles.

Colormanagment.org

basICColor (Karl Koch, Penzberg). A comprehensive collection of ICC profiles for many use cases. The website also provides test images with respect to the CIELAB colour model and for screen calibration.

Your contribution

Do you know other downloead sources that may be relevant to this site? Did you create something yourself that you'd like to be linked to from FreeColour?
Please send us a description, and we'll gladly add it to our link collection.

News

May 02, 2015

Open Colour Systems Collection (OCSC) 1.0 Available for Download

As of today, FreieFarbe/FreeColour and dtp studio oldenburg have made available a collection of more than 250 commercial colour systems under a Creative Commons licence: The Open Colour Systems Collection (OCSC) 1.0. These colour palettes can be freely distributed with all Libre Graphics programmes.

Please note that the digital colour values in these palettes aren't necessarily identical with the official ones provided by the respective colour vendors. Instead, they are based on a sophisticated spectrometric measuring procedure of the official physical colour references (fans, swatches etc.). Thus, they are potentially even more "correct" than the official vendors' palette files.

Regarding the licence, dtp studio decided to use a rather restrictive CC version: CC BY-ND 4.0. The simple reason for this choice is that users across programmes and platforms need to be assured that they are working with the same colour values when using a specific palette. In other words: It's an important part of the "colour communication" objective.

The colour palettes in dtp studio's proprietary software products were originally in the company's proprietary BCS binary format. These BCS palettes were accompanied by plain text and image files, which are being read by the respective programmes at runtime.

By contrast, the Open Colour Systems Collection is available in Swatchbooker's SBZ format. FreieFarbe / FreeColour and dtp studio are aware of the fact that the SBZ format isn't widely supported yet, but it seemed to be the only open format that was fit for purpose:

It allows for storing CIE L*a*b* values (since all Open Colour Systems Collection files use this colour model)

It allows for storing Metadata, including: description, copyright and licensing information, as well as metadata translation (the descriptions of the palettes are currently being stored in English and German in each file)

There exists a reference implementation in the form of Swatchbooker

Since SBZ files are ZIP archives, it was possible to add a preview (a photograph of the real world colour fans or swatch) to them.

FreieFarbe / FreeColour and dtp studio would be pleased to cooperate with the Libre Graphics Community on improvements to the SBZ format, its eventual standardisation, or the development of better alternatives. Both would also be glad to explore future fields of cooperation with respect to the objectives mentioned above.